Each year, thousands of deaths and millions of injuries result from automobile or other vehicle crashes. Billions of dollars of losses occur as a direct and indirect result of accidents, theft, and injury related to automobiles and other vehicles. It is desirable to reduce those losses and to generally improve the safety of drivers and passengers.
Many accidents and thefts occur in high risk areas. For example, more theft losses may occur in urban areas. Accident-related deaths may occur on certain stretches of suburban roads with difficult to navigate turns or impaired sight lines. Many non-injury accidents occur in high traffic density areas, such as parking lots or shopping areas.
It would be desirable to provide information to vehicle operators to alert them of the existence and location of these higher risk areas so that they can either avoid them or take extra care when operating in those areas. It would further be desirable to provide more accurate and current data about areas which have higher loss risks, including the receipt of accurate information associated with accidents and potential claims. Further still, it would be desirable to monitor or identify driving patterns associated with certain drivers to allow those drivers to receive discounts or other benefits based on desirable driving patterns such as avoiding or reducing time spent operating in high loss risk areas.